Useless Conversation

[Sky]

Bonus points for calling people a cunt outside the UK. I have bad habits from knowing you cunts.

At my usual market I like to park past and across from the cart corral. I always try to get my cart tucked into similar carts (we have two kinds) and often take a couple seconds to straighten out the corral in general. I used to have to bring in carts sometimes when I was managing receiving years ago and I like to help the world be orderly :)

I also ride the carts out to my car, it's fun and so much faster than walking out to my car at the far end of the lot. Makes lots of people smile, seeing a guy in a suit with his legs all splayed out riding a cart through the lot...

[HaemishM]

Nothing irritates me more when trying to park when some utter twat has left his cart in the middle of a perfectly good, close to the front parking space. It's even more irritating when the cart corral is literally right next to the space. I have slightly less scorn for the people who at least bother to take the cart to the corral, but just let it drift there without pushing it as far into the corral as possible. People are fucking lazy shits.

[Samwise]

My car is 12 years old now and every inch of it is dinged and/or keyed.  It's fucking liberating.  

When I finally get a new car someday I might need to scrape it against a few parking barriers just to take the anxiety out of wondering when it'll get its first blemish.

[Yegolev]

If you manage the carts, you are taking food from the paychecks of hard-working (tee hee) Amuricans.

[Selby]

Fuck that shit, I used to manage the carts & I think I was the only one at the store on my shift who did. I always help out straightening the carts and herding the lone ones around. I usually get much gratitude from the kids who are supposed to be doing it (except at the local Target, but fuck those lazy assholes).

I too also call everyone I see and disagree with a cunt. Go go other people's swear words appropriation!

[Trippy]

Cart corrals are the place I won't park next to/across from if I can possibly avoid it. People just launch carts at them because they are too lazy to walk the 20 feet to put the cart inside thus creating wheeled projectiles primed to bang into my car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA6EL0FPZHA

[Chimpy]

I do own a GTI so I can relate very much to that commercial. 

[Ard]

seeing a guy in a suit

Of all the things being discussed, this is the part that baffles me.  Sky wearing a suit.

edit:  and the internet provided me with the only possible image of this scenario:

[Viin]

How about:

[Ard]

That one strikes me more as Yegolev out for a morning stroll, but the jacket isn't orange enough.

[Chimpy]

I think it would be more this:

[Nebu]

This is more the image that I have of Sky.

[Yegolev]

That feel when you're the only one in the email chain without a PhD.

[Nebu]

That feel when you're the only one in the email chain without a PhD.

Thankfully, I have no idea what that's like. 

Does that make you Wolowitz?

[Sky]

That feel when you're the only one in the email chain without a PhD.

That was my dad as the nuclear safety chief consultant on a project to convert a weapons processing facility to fuel processing in the 90s. He had more education than anyone else on the project (he is a fiend for training and school on other people's dimes), but they all had the degrees (he has a few, but all As and Bs, not Ms or Ds).

Nebu, while my beard is much shorter these days, it is true that every girl is crazy about a sharp dressed man.

[Rasix]

That feel when you're the only one in the email chain without a PhD.

Hah. That's a relatively new phenomenon for me. Working with the Zurich labs on something at the moment. At least I've got a masters.. 

[Rishathra]

Once upon a time that would have bothered me, but my current job has me surrounded by more PhDs than ever before in my life.  Here I have realized that, by and large, they are phenomenally stupid.  It's like whatever process they went through to get those extra letters at the end of their names has burned out any capacity for reason, problem-solving, intuition, critical thinking, and rational behavior.

[Rasix]

Guy that is writing a very complicated compression algorithm can't seem to figure out how to host a 30 gig file.

[Nebu]

Once upon a time that would have bothered me, but my current job has me surrounded by more PhDs than ever before in my life.  Here I have realized that, by and large, they are phenomenally stupid.  It's like whatever process they went through to get those extra letters at the end of their names has burned out any capacity for reason, problem-solving, intuition, critical thinking, and rational behavior.

Generally, I would agree with this.  Getting a PhD primarily means that you are exceptionally good at one thing at the cost of being an idiot at most everything else.  The exceptions that I've seen are people that got their PhD in science or engineering from a faculty member that was not well funded.  There's something about making due with barely operable equipment that teaches you how to MacGiver the hell out of shit.  

[apocrypha]

I spent 15 years trying to manage labs full of either PhD's or PhD students. It doesn't help that I have always looked much younger than I am, but it was basically impossible to get any kind of respect from those cockwombles. And when one of the things you're responsible for is health and safety it kinda becomes a problem real fast when the lab workers ignore that completely.

[Trippy]

That feel when you're the only one in the email chain without a PhD.

If it makes you feel better people who put that in their email sigs are almost all insecure.

[Selby]

I've worked with and for PhD's since I left the grocery store at 19. Everything you hear about them is true, extremely competent at one thing and 90% are morons at everything else. The exceptions seem to be the very highest of the higher ups at the labs I've worked with and the owners of a large company. Apparently to succeed at running a national lab or owning a $500M company you have to have some kind of people skills. The lab workers and experimenters? They're lucky they don't kill themselves or irradiate the place sometimes.

Being treated with respect or Wolowitz tends to come down to just how big of a dick the person you're talking to is... and they'd likely be a dick without the PhD.

[Chimpy]

Engineering, math, and physical science PhDs are an interesting bunch. I much prefer dealing with PhDs from other disciplines as their fields tend to actually communicate with people like people and seem to be able to function better in mixed groups. I know a few life science PhDs who ride the borderline between "normal person" and "stereotypical PhD".

[Morat20]

I work with a lot of Phd's and it's pretty much the same, with a side order of them thinking I should somehow both know my job AND their job. ("Why don't you understand fracture mechanics? This is basic stuff, like senior level bachelor's stuff". Dude, I took Physics I and II. We didn't get to metal fatigue. Also I don't have a PhD in mechanical engineering. Computer Science here. We learned NOTHING about metal fatigue. I can, however, explain to you that the algorithm you just wrote in Fortran there is, to be blunt, incredibly fucking inefficient. Why not bubble sort it while you're at it?")

Oh, and also I'm somehow the IT department and not a software engineer.

[Merusk]

If you want to go passive aggressive with it you should start asking about the best lubricants for the rusted out nuts on your yard equipment. Also, can they select a good HVAC unit to replace your current one? What sort of filter works best to get rid of allergens in your current system in the meantime? Oh, They're PHD mechanical engineers, what do they mean they don't know that shit. Kids 2 years out of college can do that.

[apocrypha]

The sad thing about PhDs is that, in life sciences anyway, most of them will never have a decent career but will hop from contract to contract, all 2-3 years tops. Maybe 1 in 20 will get a lectureship and maybe 1 in 20 of them will get a chair. They work their arses off to get their PhDs, usually doing very long hours for very low rates of pay, then they work their arses off to get grants and mostly they get shit all for it. Also, in the UK at least, by the time they get to 40 they're more expensive to employ than a fresh PhD and their knowledge is often out of date, so it gets increasingly difficult for them to land anything at all.

So they may be generally useless cockwombles with no purpose outside of their tiny field but I do have some sympathy for their shitty career structure.

[Yegolev]

It doesn't bother me at all, because people with a doctorate in meteorology are generally unassuming or good-natured.  Lucked out, in my opinion, and the new data visualization person imported from IBM is one of the cool PhDs.  I also know enough people with a PhD to realize most of the things previously stated.  Besides, I also have seven years of college PLUS lots of life experience from poor decisions.

[Yegolev]

In the poor decision (unrealized) department, I'm considering booking a flight into Machester-Boston instead of Boston-Logan.  Destination is between the two airports.

[Morat20]

The sad thing about PhDs is that, in life sciences anyway, most of them will never have a decent career but will hop from contract to contract, all 2-3 years tops. Maybe 1 in 20 will get a lectureship and maybe 1 in 20 of them will get a chair. They work their arses off to get their PhDs, usually doing very long hours for very low rates of pay, then they work their arses off to get grants and mostly they get shit all for it. Also, in the UK at least, by the time they get to 40 they're more expensive to employ than a fresh PhD and their knowledge is often out of date, so it gets increasingly difficult for them to land anything at all.

So they may be generally useless cockwombles with no purpose outside of their tiny field but I do have some sympathy for their shitty career structure.

In all fairness, the ones I work with do real engineering with their doctorates.

People build airplanes and spacecraft off their work.

And one reason I DO like my job, is they'll often actually listen to me when it comes to crap I know. Which is why I'm mostly okay with them forgetting I'm not IT at times. :)

[Sir T]

It doesn't bother me at all, because people with a doctorate in meteorology are generally unassuming or good-natured.

Something about dealing with FORCES BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION tends to beat the humility into you. 

[Yegolev]

I have heard, on more than one occasion, when discussing data flow interruptions: "It's just weather"

[apocrypha]

Maybe they meant 'just' as in 'righteous'?

[Soln]

They're shutting down Vine.  And I just discovered Will Sasso's Vines.  /lemons /drivingArnold

[apocrypha]

Let's hope it's just a prelude to shutting down Twitter too.

[schild]

They're shutting down Vine.  And I just discovered Will Sasso's Vines.  /lemons /drivingArnold

If YouTube and Vine were just Marlon Webb, they would've fulfilled a greater purpose. Do a search for "watermelone" and "take on me band of the bold" for true enlightenment.